Something recently has raised its ugly head again. Live media DVD problem which surfaces after its initial boot and begins when a Save-Session has been completed at Shutdown-Reboot.

This problem that I will describe happened a couple years ago, and has now re-surfaced.

I am posting here for 2 reasons:

Understanding of what's occurring

a resolutions that ALL Puppy distro developers can benefit from.

Scenario
All of us begin from an ISO download. Some/many, will then create a Live media from that download for booting from CD/DVD. Puppy has a great feature where all of yo
ur session's work can be save; either to your HDD/USB or back to your CD/DVD media. This technology works and works well.

In all cases, upon getting a good downloaded ISO, once the ISO is used to create the CD/DVD media, it has booted the PC to the distro's desktop. And, in all cases, assuming the media was created as multi-session, I am able to save the work that I do.

But, there is a minor problem where I need help from this community to address understanding of what's occurring and whether there are steps to resolution.

Problem
As share above, in all cases Puppy is capable of writing to the media it booted from. In some cases, the media cannot be booted after Puppy creates the Live media in the PC/laptop that it was created on.

What makes this dilemma even more difficult is that you can take the problematic media to a different machine and that PC or machine will boot the media.

This leads to the questions:

Does anyone know why this occurs?

Has anyone else seen this problem?

Does anyone know the steps to take to capture data supporting this problem?

And has anyone know a technique to resolve this?

Most perplexing of all is that the media initially boots withour issues. Its only after the PC writes a save-session that the problem surfaces. And, to make things even more complicated, it has only happen with certain distro. This problem, now, has raised its head in LightHouse64 515. The 514 media boots without issue (but, I have not used the laptop to write a save-session, yet.)

Additional Information
I have replicated this on a X2 64bit Laptop on the following media used in the onboard DVD burner.

DVD+RW*]DVD-RW*]DVD-R

I believe if we understood this, the distro development benefits from common knowledge.

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Something recently has raised its ugly head again. Live media DVD problem which surfaces after its initial boot and begins when a Save-Session has been completed at Shutdown-Reboot.

This problem that I will describe happened a couple years ago, and has now re-surfaced.

I am posting here for 2 reasons:

Understanding of what's occurring

a resolutions that ALL Puppy distro developers can benefit from.

Scenario
All of us begin from an ISO download. Some/many, will then create a Live media from that download for booting from CD/DVD. Puppy has a great feature where all of yo
ur session's work can be save; either to your HDD/USB or back to your CD/DVD media. This technology works and works well.

In all cases, upon getting a good downloaded ISO, once the ISO is used to create the CD/DVD media, it has booted the PC to the distro's desktop. And, in all cases, assuming the media was created as multi-session, I am able to save the work that I do.

But, there is a minor problem where I need help from this community to address understanding of what's occurring and whether there are steps to resolution.

Problem
As share above, in all cases Puppy is capable of writing to the media it booted from. In some cases, the media cannot be booted after Puppy creates the Live media in the PC/laptop that it was created on.

What makes this dilemma even more difficult is that you can take the problematic media to a different machine and that PC or machine will boot the media.

This leads to the questions:

Does anyone know why this occurs?

Has anyone else seen this problem?

Does anyone know the steps to take to capture data supporting this problem?

And has anyone know a technique to resolve this?

Most perplexing of all is that the media initially boots withour issues. Its only after the PC writes a save-session that the problem surfaces. And, to make things even more complicated, it has only happen with certain distro. This problem, now, has raised its head in LightHouse64 515. The 514 media boots without issue (but, I have not used the laptop to write a save-session, yet.)

Additional Information
I have replicated this on a X2 64bit Laptop on the following media used in the onboard DVD burner.

DVD+RW*]DVD-RW*]DVD-R

I believe if we understood this, the distro development benefits from common knowledge.

Helpful Ideas???

I've tested live media in all 3 of the machines i have at my disposal, and it works as its supposed to.
Do you have the exact model and make of your DVD drive? It's possible that a single manufacturer drive is the problem. I'll list the drives I have when I get back to my house and can check them.
You said you are having this issue with LHP515. Can you please check LHP514, and see if it works or fails as well.

Let me see if I understand your problem.
You're on Computer A, you burn the ISO (disc1)... you then boot use your system and then shutdown and save your session to Disc1. You are saying that you can no longer boot Computer A with Disc 1? You also seem to be saying that you can take disc1 to Computer B and boot with it fine.

Have you tried to do the opposite? Use Computer B to make disc2, boot the sytem and save session to disc2. Will Computer B reboot using this disc2? Can you take disc2 and boot correctly in Computer A?

Lastly, when you say you "the media cannot be booted after Puppy creates the Live media", what do you mean by boot? Does Bios recognize the media? Does syslinux even load? Does it boot but not using any of your previous sessions?_________________

One other thing for understanding: I can boot the Live Media on the laptop over and over again... so long as I dont save-session to it.

Q5sys wrote:

... Let me see if I understand your problem.
You're on Computer A, you burn the ISO (disc1)... you then boot use your system and then shutdown and save your session to Disc1. You are saying that you can no longer boot Computer A with Disc 1?

True

Q5sys wrote:

You also seem to be saying that you can take disc1 to Computer B and boot with it fine.

True

Q5sys wrote:

... Have you tried to do the opposite?

The 514 is an example I've used. But don't remember if 515 media with save-session from the other PC has been tested on the laptop

Q5sys wrote:

... when you say you "the media cannot be booted after Puppy creates the Live media", what do you mean by boot?

This refers to

Quote:

Boot from the ISO created multi-sesson Live media

tailor the desktop

Shutdown allowing LH64 to save-session to the Live media it booted from.

Then after this step is done, the live media will NOT boot again on the laptop.

Hope I am clear in that the media will not boot to any boot-manager or to anything. The laptop pauses to try, then skips over it. And should I "force" select at boot-time the DVD, it still will ignore it and will not boot. If I replace it with another bootable, no problem. And, I have a FATSlacko that I have used for months that this has not occurred on. (thus, I am reluctant to try to point the finger at hardware or whether this is a software issue?)

Tomorrow, I will try the following:
LH64-515 Boot and save session from a computer which does not have this problem I'm witnessing on the laptop. Then move the DVD to the lapttop.
Make an ISO from the 514 DVD and burn a new DVD (the 514 DVD is the same one I have used since 514 introduction; and I do NOT want to lose it.). Using it, I will see if the laptop has a problem burning a save-session to that media.

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... when you say you "the media cannot be booted after Puppy creates the Live media", what do you mean by boot?

This refers to

Quote:

Boot from the ISO created multi-sesson Live media

tailor the desktop

Shutdown allowing LH64 to save-session to the Live media it booted from.

Then after this step is done, the live media will NOT boot again on the laptop.

Hope I am clear in that the media will not boot to any boot-manager or to anything. The laptop pauses to try, then skips over it. And should I "force" select at boot-time the DVD, it still will ignore it and will not boot. If I replace it with another bootable, no problem. And, I have a FATSlacko that I have used for months that this has not occurred on. (thus, I am reluctant to try to point the finger at hardware or whether this is a software issue?)

Tomorrow, I will try the following:
LH64-515 Boot and save session from a computer which does not have this problem I'm witnessing on the laptop. Then move the DVD to the lapttop.
Make an ISO from the 514 DVD and burn a new DVD (the 514 DVD is the same one I have used since 514 introduction; and I do NOT want to lose it.). Using it, I will see if the laptop has a problem burning a save-session to that media.

Hope this info is helpful.

Well that sounds like the BIOS is not recognizing the media as being bootable media. Which is odd to say the least, since the boot sector shouldnt be getting messed with during a session save to DVD.

Also try doing the opposite. Disc2 in Computer B, make a save, then see if it reboots in Computer B and see if itll boot on Computer A.
If it wont boot on Computer A but will on Computer B... then we've narrowed down the problem to Computer A._________________

Gcmartin, I believe the problem you describe only occurs in laptops. The same problem has been reported many times in the forum. As I recall, every time in a laptop. I don't think it's happened to me once in 7 years of making multisession DVDs from many different Puppies, but I've never owned a laptop. Apparently, there is some difference between DVD drives used in laptops and those used in desktops, or possibly it's in the BIOS. I have no idea what it could be.

You might try updating the firmware of the DVD drive that's in your laptop. Unfortunately, that can usually only be done from Windows. Possibly it would work from Wine.

I agree with your analysis based upon threads. I, have had this problem occur in Laptops and don't remember this ever happening on any of my desktops.

One other issue that I also need to test is to write "bootable live media" on the laptop from other distros. There are 2 issues I have had over past weeks with LH64-515 Mariner Live media.

blanking and creating bootable media from LH64-515 Mariner

doing a save-session and having the media boot on its subsequent boot.

This weekend, I have tried several differing tests in an effort to try to better develop a repeatable method that others can do to re-create this problem. I earlier had reported that this MAY be a hardware issue. But, in further review, I an trying to look at the actual command that is used with the drive to understand if there is a parameter that would insure consistent DVD writing behavior. This rationale is being pursued because some distros do NOT exhibit the problem while others (LH64-515) does. Further, one of my biggest problem is that the process of blanking RW media, creating bootable Live media and testing both boot as well as meaningful save-session for each type of media is so time consuming, its make testing without a score-board a little taxing.

Several years ago, I have reported this behavior with a couple distros in the past, but, the problem seemed to had disappeared back then...maybe thru my own fear where I began using another PC to build bootable media as opposed to using the laptop.

My current desire is to review the actual command(s) used to, both,
create a Live media as well as write a save-session. I think we need a "standard" method of creating a multi-session Live media and also we should have a "standard" method of creating a save-session on Live media.

Lastly, it also seems that this was not a problem until someone mentioned of the Puppy Forum that use of Live media and save-session is "Experimental" even though the Puppyland community has had this facility and have it working for quite a number of years.

So, there are several things I feel need be done by me to better handle this dilemma:

First, Upgrade the DVD drive's firmware, if an upgrade exist.
And, if that continues the problem, Compare the command that creates a Live media with the command that creates a save-session in each PUP distro.

I cannot do the first step because this laptop does NOT have a Windows partition operational.

Thus far
Problem with the laptop is the DVD drive.

This was never noticed before because all prior DVD/CD media is created from a central desktop PC that I have setup specifically for writing ISOs to media. The past week is the first time using this laptop's DVD for save-session service. Thus, this media problem was never noticed until this week.

Creating media on the laptop from an ISO
When LH64 creates to it, the media is getting all the files that are in the ISO, but, the boot information is clobbered. When the media boot is attempted, the PC never gets to Lighthouse64 boot Splash screen. It just wont boot on the laptop, or on any other PC. Further, Any running PCs, allows one to mount and view the media contents, but none will boot using that media. When comparing the media contents with the ISO's, all individual itmes compare....identically, just won't boot.

Further, depending on how things are done, media created from another PC will boot on the laptop, yet, at save-session reboot, the DVD could have the media's boot information scattered in such a way as the laptop wont subsequently boot from the media, yet, that media and all save files can be seen when mounted on another PC. And, on other PCs the media will boot; just that it won't subsequently boot from the laptop???

Any other ideas whould be helpful. This problem seems to have a sporatic quality to it._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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Creating media on the laptop from an ISO
When LH64 creates to it, the media is getting all the files that are in the ISO, but, the boot information is clobbered. When the media boot is attempted, the PC never gets to Lighthouse64 boot Splash screen. It just wont boot on the laptop, or on any other PC. Further, Any running PCs, allows one to mount and view the media contents, but none will boot using that media. When comparing the media contents with the ISO's, all individual itmes compare....identically, just won't boot.

I'm wondering if you have a faulty disk(s). Have you tried burning the LH64 ISO to another brand and/or another format of DVD?

I experienced intermittent problems with a faulty CD and Wary earlier this year, until finally it would not boot. Once I burned a new disk, I was good to go...

Monsie_________________My username is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

I'm wondering if you have a faulty disk(s). Have you tried burning the LH64 ISO to another brand and/or another format of DVD?

I experienced intermittent problems with a faulty CD and Wary earlier this year, until finally it would not boot. Once I burned a new disk, I was good to go...

Monsie

Thanks @Monsie. Yes, I have 6 different medias that I'm testing with to try to understand this problem better. DVDR (plus and minus), DVDRW (plus and minus), CDR, and CDRW. Seem not to be media related.

So its DVD hardware or writing technolodgy missing something.

Question

What trype of drive and what type of media did you see your issue?

Thanks in advance for your answer._________________Get ACTIVE Create Circles; Do those good things which benefit people's needs!
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Lastly, it also seems that this was not a problem until someone mentioned of the Puppy Forum that use of Live media and save-session is "Experimental" even though the Puppyland community has had this facility and have it working for quite a number of years.

I think you are referring to me. I did say multisession support is experimental; but I said that in the context of Fatdog 600. Multisession support *is* experimental in Fatdog 600 because it is completely re-written but it is not extensively tested: it does its job differently than the standard puppy multisession feature that you all know and love for years (for example, it writes SFS to the DVD instead of just dumping the files; it can also save these SFS to usb stick, etc).

LHP64 5.15 is still based on Fatdog 521; whose multisession support code comes directly from Puppy 4.x unchanged. I did say in 521 thread that it isn't much tested because we don't use it, but I didn't say it was experimental then. The fact that multisession works in LHP64 5.14 and earlier means that it is, in fact, working.

My issue was with a CD-R that I was running on my cd burner with my old Pentium 3. The weird thing is that it booted fine at first, then after a few weeks, I found the boot process was getting hung up, so then I would re-boot once or twice until successful. At the time, I thought it was just my system acting up (hardware issue) so I didn't even bother checking to see if my other Puppy CD's would work... until about six weeks later when the CD would not boot up at all --kept getting a kernel panic

The thing is... I am the only person on my computer, and I have an annoying habit of handling my stuff carefully, of trying to look after my belongings no matter how old... So, I knew that the CD was not abused or worn out... not after only four months use. All I can conclude is that the media was faulty to begin with, and that the image burn did not take properly... despite having no indication of errors in the burning process to begin with. The only other thing I can think of that might help me in future, is that I should get one of those laser lens cleaning discs and run it on the CD drive occasionally as dirt and dust build-up can definitely cause issues.

hth,
Monsie_________________My username is pronounced: "mun-see". Derived from my surname, it was my nickname throughout high school.

I do remember you saying that, but, my post wasn't specific. Shinobar and I think one other referred to Live media save-session was "experimental" in the past, this year.

The Technology Feat introduced to make save-session simpler to understand and take less space.
BTW, if I didn't already, I want to say now: "You handling of the save-session on Live media the same way as handling it on HDDs is BRILLIANT!" I wish the rest of the Puppy development community understood this technology addition and could see the advantage it offers. Its not just a change in technology, its significant in that there is now ONLY one save-session technology and it applies to Live media, removable media, and permanent media What's far reaching about this is various other extensions in the form of backup and moving from media to media that your technology addition brings to the table for our use. This technology makes "consistent" the file structures across all medias used to boot PUPs. But, we can only hope that others see the benefit as well.

Now that you mention it, I should test that as well. Should I have similar issue with the drive in the 64bit Laptop: Then if the media works perfectly on the several desktop PCs, then, that should be another clue of the hardware issue I suspect I'm seeing. BTW, this doesn't seem to be a desktop issue at this time.

In any event, other distro developers could benefit from your insightful technology addition. Further, I wonder whether this is even possible for BarryK to embrace into WOOF? In any event its has tremendous benefit in and beyond existing save-session technology in Puppy.

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The Technology Feat introduced to make save-session simpler to understand and take less space.
BTW, if I didn't already, I want to say now: "You handling of the save-session on Live media the same way as handling it on HDDs is BRILLIANT!" I wish the rest of the Puppy development community understood this technology addition and could see the advantage it offers. Its not just a change in technology, its significant in that there is now ONLY one save-session technology and it applies to Live media, removable media, and permanent media What's far reaching about this is various other extensions in the form of backup and moving from media to media that your technology addition brings to the table for our use. This technology makes "consistent" the file structures across all medias used to boot PUPs. But, we can only hope that others see the benefit as well.

Two Issues: First, the ordinary reader does not gain much knowledge from a congratulatory comment, and instead needs either a detailed description of the grand design itself, or specific links to such a discussion. That would allow the reader to address particular design issues for their real worth, instead of either joining or opposing a general fan club.

Next, the idea that all storage technologies can be shoehorned into the hard-drive conceptual model is costly self-delusion. Yes, the "drive" approach was spectacularly successful in unifying rotating hard drives and USB flash drives. Unfortunately, optical "drives" simply cannot be made to operate like hard drives, no matter what data structures are used. That leaves optical drives operating without the extra support they need and should have.

Hard drives and flash drives inherently work on small, interchangeable "sectors," and, nowadays, bad sectors can be and often are detected and swapped out inside the drive with little or no OS knowledge or involvement. No wonder such drives seem reliable and convenient (although every hard drive eventually must fail).

In contrast, optical drives work on a continuous, helical "track" where "sectors" do not exist and data replacement is not possible. The "storage errors are hidden by the drive" function which we have come to expect is simply unavailable with current optical drives. Instead, optical storage error-control must involve the OS, and probably the user as well. The general strategy is the same as is used inside other drives: we write, then we check the write for error, and if we find error, we write again until there is no error, else we store on a different disc, different drive (e.g., USB flash), or in the cloud (e.g., an attachment to an email sent under SSL), until we have perfect storage, or the user allows us to give up.

In particular, I have been loading Puppy from DVD, typically several times a day, every day, for years. (Only our beloved Win7 media system has a hard drive.) Optical problems are not hidden from me, instead they intrude. I am long past the DVD writer problems (yes, my old laptop DVD writer DOES handle Puppy multisession writes), the DVD disc problems, the -R, +R, +RW problems and so on. Instead, I experience some probability of write failure (something like 5 to 10 percent) on every optical write. Write failure is particularly disconcerting on the first save, because Puppy provides no write-check and no chance for user recovery, just failure. All this is not news.

After the first Save, once the Save button is on the desktop, I can and do use that to save, and then I mount the result and look for the new dated directory. If that does not exist, I write again, and usually that works. It is possible to Save the exact same data multiple times, and loading the extra data takes almost no extra time at all. Given a valid save, all of the OS rigamarole to "log out" is useless and silly. I just turn off the power supply, which is, of course, just what would happen anyway in a real power failure.

All Puppies which give a nod to DVD-load usage need to allow the user to provide the error-control which optical drives cannot. That means without exception automatically checking every optical write, and not ending a session until the user has successfully saved (or explicitly given up).

RandSec, did you read the post by jamesbond to which gcmartin was referring? As I understand what jamesbond says in that post, Fatdog 600 might be just what you're asking for. Why don't you give it a try and let us know?

RandSec, did you read the post by jamesbond to which gcmartin was referring? As I understand what jamesbond says in that post, Fatdog 600 might be just what you're asking for. Why don't you give it a try and let us know?

Of course I read I read this whole thread before posting. I also read

http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/faqs/harddrive.html

There is great need for two more classes of document: First, an effective first-start document specifically addressing each type of user. (My particular "user type" is the DVD-load user with no hard drive and no USB flash drive either.) Next, a list of all OS "features" (not just the latest changes), with a description of each feature: what it is, what is intended to do, how it is used, and how that benefits the user, plus designer comments.

Since my report will be negative, let me first say that I have been hoping for Fatdog64 to be the long-needed solution to my Lighthouse64 problems (which would probably be reduced with updated AMD video drivers). All I need is Firefox browsing from a DVD-load, but that also means I need to configure Firefox, save that to DVD, and have it automatically restored upon next boot. (I also need to open the saved state for examination and recovery of earlier file versions.) My hardware has been doing that with various Puppies for years. Sadly, Fatdog64-611-firefox failed, and this is how:

1. Starting from a raw .iso boot I just wanted to configure a few things in Firefox to verify DVD Save and recovery. I added LastPass, NoScript, and Tab Mix Plus so I could test some real configuration.

2. On first run there is no Save button. While normal for Puppies, that also implies that a DVD write failure (which does sometimes occur in exactly this situation) cannot be either detected or recovered from before the OS purposefully ends the session. That is nasty.

5. I am able to mount the DVD and see the ...save.sfs files. By right-clicking I could load them manually. Apparently they must be loaded in date order, in the sense that the earlier ones would not load after the later one.

6. Unfortunately, even when the OS claimed to have loaded the .sfs files properly, none of the Firefox configuration was recovered.

7. I then commanded that the DVD be ejected. The OS objected saying something like: "Error Unable to mount <nothing written>, it is currently in use by the following process: <nothing written> Do you want me to stop them and try again?" Clicking on Yes just brought up the error again and again and again. Clicking on No got rid of the panel but did not eject the DVD. Although various things were tried, it seemed impossible to eject the DVD. It was necessary to bring down the OS to get the disc out.

8. There is every reason to believe that Fatdog64 must work very well in its' development environment, which I expect always does include a hard drive. Sadly, as a different user, I have different needs and goals, and one of those is to run without hard drive or USB flash drive. I can justify those decisions in technical detail, but none of that matters unless one can accept that my needs are valid even though not like your own; my goals are not yours, but they matter anyway.

9. I expect all of this will be fixed.

10. One of my goals is to be able to read a mass of 20-year-old work now saved in WordPerfect .wpd files. Nominally, Abiword could load those files, but the current 64-bit version does not. Recently, when I installed Abiword on my Win7 media system, I found an install-option panel which included the .wpd option, and now that works, but I would rather avoid Win7. Apparently, one could at one time install individual options, but no longer. Accordingly, I would ask that Abiword be re-compiled for 64-bit Puppies, with .wpd file loading enabled. Thanks!

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